While I hope Seacology succeeds, their approach definitely lacks the novelty that Mr. Greenwald ascribes to it. Conservation NGOs trying to work with communities in this fashion is, in fact, nothing new.

The approach dates to at least the 1970s, perhaps even earlier, when the indigenous peoples' rights and environmental movements began to encounter one another, More than fifteen years ago, when I graduated from school, one of the first "real" things I ever did was assist negotiation of relationships (and sorting out problems) between environmental NGOs and Amazonian indigenous peoples.

I hope (and presume) that Seacology knows more about the water that's under the bridges, because these kinds of relationships tend to be extremely tricky in practice. The differences in expectations, cultures, and negotiating styles can be serious. While there is frequently common interest in preserving resources, there's a world of difference between Berkeley and the realities of the rainforest, and this type of gulf has led a lot of efforts like this to their downfall.

An interesting article but, in service of a heartwarming, human interest story, the author has sacrifced important historical and governance contexts. Both Mark and Meity worked for me in the U.S. Government-funded Natural Resources Management II Program (1997-2002), an effort to develop and disseminate participatory and good governance models of environmentally-sound development. North Sulawesi province and the Bunaken Marine National Park (alluded to in the article) were one of the project's focal areas. Meity and Mark were and I'm sure still are highly capable professionals who were amongst those staff responsible for the success of the NRM II program.

However, the program always attempted to distill the elements of the participatory, grass roots governance models that were developed there and in other parts of Indonesia so that the new democracy of Indonesia could incorporate them into law and practice. This was not easy to do; overcoming a legacy of decades of dictatorial rule and corruption.

Nevertheless, I am sure they would agree that, however, satisfying personally the Seacology approach might be, in the end, it really should be local government that builds and maintains schools and it should be possible to demonstrate to local people that it is in their own best economic and social interest not to deforest their watersheds or destroy their local wildlife populations.

As noted by the previous letter writer, "stewardship agreements" of the kind that Seacology have undertaken in North Sulawesi are not at all novel and, indeed, have taken a wide variety of forms, with some working better than others all over the world for years. The best of them don't simply seek to "retail" envionmental governance village-by-village but try to build networks which will let the process become self-sustaining or incorporated into government or civil society structures. Let's hope that's where Seacology is headed.